2006 – Page 14 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Macintosh commercial parodies

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3 new Mac commercial spoofs.

Networking

Gaming

Performance

The times they are a changin’

I really don’t want to be one of those old guys who goes on and on about how things were done when I was young. Yea, I wax nostalgic about things like the first digital watches or my old Tandy TRS-80 I had back in 1978. But that doesn’t prevent me from revelling in a dual core Apple laptop and buying a new cell phone every few years.

Heck, I have even rid myself of all but my most collectible vinyl and happily load my iPod with music way younger than I am.

But there are some things that you just shouldn’t mess with (besides Texas). Especially in the name of product marketing.

It appears that Parker Brothers has decided to “update” the game of Monopoly. Not only that, but they are teaming up with Visa to do it.

No more paper money! Oh no, now you get a mock Visa card and a little machine that allows you to transfer money to and from the bank.

Chris Weatherhead, brand manager at Parker games, which makes Monopoly, said: “We wanted to design a more relevant version of Monopoly to reflect modern society.”

That sounds like a load of hooey if you ask me (pardon the old man-speak). If anything, it’s just one more way to put advertising in front of consumers.

According to the news article you will still be able to buy the “antiquated” cash version.

I haven’t been this bothered about a board game since Electronic Battleship.

You should not need batteries to play the classic board games. It just ain’t right!

Via Engadget: Monoploly ditches cash, goes plastic

Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager

On second thought, let’s not go to the Internet. It’s a silly place

and, apparently, a series of tubes.

Watch this:

Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, explains the Internet and Net Neutrality

Then this:

The Daily Show responds

And you’ll understand this:

DJ Techno Ted Stevens responds

A nerd’s life

This weekend while hanging out downtown at the 3700 Main St. Entertainment Megaplex (aka The Continental Club, Sig’s Lagoon, Taco A-Go-Go and The Big Top) I found myself sitting behind the counter at Sig’s Lagoon working on Tomas Escalante’s laptop.

Tomas Escalante is a stand up guy. Not only does he run Sig’s Lagoon, he is also the front man for Clouseaux who, as it just so happens, have a very nice new CD that just came out.

Poor Tomas, his laptop was crawling with some nasty trojan horses and other malware that was quite tenacious.

Friday night, out on the town and getting my geek on. This is the life.

There was a blues show next door at the Continental Club that did not interest me all that much so I was content to work on the PC and chat with the steady stream of customers coming into the shop.

On this Friday night none other than Allen Hill of the Allen Oldies Band was on site stumping for votes in the upcoming 2006 Houston Press Music Awards.

Dressed to kill in his trademark tux and tennies he was spinning oldies on vinyl and encouraging patrons to fill out a ballot and cast their vote. The Allen Oldies are nominated in the Best Cover Band category this year. It was hoot to watch.

I spent most of that evening just enjoying the groove at Sig’s and watching Allen’s antics as I repaired the laptop and got it back up and running.

If you are in the Houston area and have not checked out Sig’s Lagoon I strongly suggest you find the time and go have a look. It’s a record store/gift shop that is quite unique.

The other bird

We all know Dooley. He’s my Timneh African Grey parrot. I’ve had him for nearly 10 years and he’s my buddy.

Alas, Dooley is not the only bird in this house.

About 5 or 6 years ago Cynthia decided she wanted a parrot of her own. We shopped around and considered Amazons and even looked into getting a scarlet red female Eclectus. After much consideration we decided that these birds might be a bit too intimidating for her due to their size. Our friends at Adventures in Birds suggested a smaller bird and told us about the Monk Parrot, also known as a Quaker Parrot.

This sounded like a fine bird but they did not have any ready for adoption at the time nor did they have a clutch being raised.

As we were leaving one of the shop keepers said “What about Mr. Zippers?” and Cynthia turned around and said “Mr. Zippers? What ABOUT Mr. Zippers?” You could see it in her eyes that she loved the name.

They introduced us to Mr. Zippers and told us the story of how he came to be named.

As Mr. Zippers was being raised and hand fed the caretaker of this particular bird managed to botch a batch of the feeding formula. Traditionally you prepare the formula in a bottle while it sits in a pot of water over a flame.

The keeper was unable to prepare it in this manner (for reasons I don’t recall) and proceeded to heat it in the microwave. This resulted in a formula that was, unbeknownst to the caretaker, scalding hot on the inside and only warm on the outside.

When the formula was drawn into an eye dropper and then fed to the young Quaker chick it scalded his crop and did some severe damage. Being the humanitarians they are they took the young injured parrot to the vet and had his crop stitched up to repair the damage. The end result was a baby parrot with stitches in his neck that looked like a zipper which led to the name.

They did not know if the bird would ever talk and at the time he was still being hand fed. Cynthia is a bit of sucker for a hard luck story (which explains our longevity) and decided she wanted to adopt Mr. Zippers. The folks at Adventures in Birds agreed to let us adopt Mr. Zippers and arranged for us to collect him in a few weeks, once he was eating solid food.

When we brought Mr. Zippers home we were thinking here’s a nice, sweet birdy who will be Cynthia’s little green companion. He’ll sit on her shoulder and eat tasty treats and nobody will care if he can talk or not because he’s a sweet little guy who’s had a rough tough life of toil and strife but now has a home with a loving couple who will care for him for the rest of his little green life.

Fast forward a few years.

Mr. Zippers can talk!
He can say “I love you” and “I’m a bad bad birdy” and he sings a little song that Cynthia made up that goes:

“Handsome little Zipper-zoo!
Just a bird
Yes he is
A baby bird”

He clucks and whistles and he just adores Cynthia. Yes, he’s completely devoted to Cynthia.

And as much as he loves her, he HATES me.

This is pretty much all I see when I look at Mr. Zippers

That is 120 grams of the most spiteful, beaky, hateful little bird I have ever seen in my life! I am a giant of a creature to him. I could crush him like a bug but he could give a hoot. He will come for me with his beak wide open just itching to chomp on me and cause me as much pain as he can. He is absolutely FEARLESS!

When I walk across the room his head follows me with his beak wide open as if he’s just hoping I’ll fall into this open maw. If I kiss or hug Cynthia in his presence he gets infuriated and squawks and hisses until it stops.

That bird hates me with every fibre of his being.

But he loves Cynthia and she loves him.

I pray to God he never gets loose lest I find myself being angrily beaked to death in my sleep by a one bird version of Hitchcock nightmare. In fact I better make sure his cage is secure before I turn in tonight.

You can get anything you want

Out here in suburbia you can get it all.

But you better hurry, the bargain hunters get moving early on the weekends.

Technology Bytes Anniversary Party = Success!

Last night’s gathering of geeks in celebration of the 11th anniversary of Technology Bytes was a spectacular success. Many, many fine people showed up as the band played and adult beverages were consumed.

A heartfelt thanks to Drop Trio for providing the music and for the special tunes learned, rehearsed and performed for the event. You guys are awesome!

The Houston Chronicle had a photographer there and I can’t wait to see THOSE pictures. For now I have the ones I took uploaded to this gallery.

We had a nice turnout, the full crew of the show was there; Peter, Barrett, phliKtid, Dwight and Groovehouse, as well as show contributors Charles Born and the lovely Aurora Losada.

I believe Jennifer the Intern has officially crossed over as evidenced by her new I Heart Geeks shirt.

Also in attendance were many of the regular geek gathering attendees as well as Groovehouse’s IRC Army, including Amateria, Sketkar, Lambo, Kimberly, BeingKatie, KD5, Yivit and TomTom

We also met many, MANY new folks who had not yet attended one of our events.

And, to make it a TRUE Tech Bytes experience, I even helped a total stranger perform a complete clean install of Windows XP on her laptop while sitting at the bar. When she arrived at the party she had a computer that didn’t work very well. By the time we were done she was happily surfing the web using the Wi-Fi provided by Dean’s Credit Clothing.

I AM a party animal, yes indeed.